"Ah." Rin and Tiun backed a few steps away anyway. It was all well and good for him to tell them not to move, but Adavidarian had a tendency to resurrect swinging, and it was all fun and games until someone ended up with a wing-talon in the eye.

"if you can't keep control of your socks..." || three(3)words || west coast

Rhaegan went to put her bass away and discovered its resting place already had an occupant--A filthy gray athletic sock. She picked up the toxic bit of material gingerly between her first finger and thumb, carefully set her bass down, and scowling, stalked through the house until she spotted Joe, sprawled in a chair, playing their vintage pre-Collapse X-box.

She slipped up beside him silently, took a fistful of his hair, and yanked.

"OW--URG!" Joe choked, as she forced the sock into his mouth.

"If you can't keep control of your socks," She said irritably, "I'm going to start putting billiard balls in each one I find, and cracking you over the head with them."

The sun shone through a thin haze of clouds. The entire sky was a blinding, featureless bowl of ceramic white turned over on their heads. "Captaen, exactly where in this Loki-fucked frontier are we?" Shanghai grumbled.

Dutch looked considerably more comfortable on horseback than she felt, and this was not at all fair and considering how sore she was, could possibly be considered grounds for making his life Hel. "Twenty-four degrees east of the town of Christ's Infinite Mercy And Boundless Love, population three hundred, twenty and six, Sir." He answered, reining in beside her.

"...Tired of this damn territory getting up and turning circles 'round us every time we blink." Shanghai muttered. Then she considered a moment. "Could use a drink and a break from sitting this beast. We'll add it to our patrol, yeah?" She raised a hand. "Banifaen, Arret!"

"C'mon, hurry up!" Adavidarian fussed, bossed, bothered and nudged. They might have even said fluttered, for all that he didn't have feathers.

"Don't see what's worth--"

"--all the fucking hurry." Rin and Tiun grumbled, sore-eyed and surly, roughly forcing their way through the darkness, over a wall, and through thorny low foliage and tall thickets of bamboo--something that might prove to be a garden if they bothered to take in anything more of their immediate surroundings; the suddenly treacherous footing and anything else within arm's reach that might be of help getting them up this hill.

Then suddenly they were on top of said hill, and the sun was rising. The light struck the mist rising from the gardens, and glinted in faded rose and glints of gold off the immense and ornate building sprawled like a small mountain or a very large dragon curled and sleeping still. Rather like they wished they were. Tiun yawned.

Adavidarian's purr cut short, as his head snapped around. "What? You're not impressed?"

"...By?"

"I was trying to surprise you." Adavidarian said peevishly. "Takomanohara's Rianic Palace is the largest and most ornate temple in the world. It's bigger than the other three combined. It makes the Taj Mahal look like a tin-roofed shack, and--"

"--Tá, it's big, we see. Can we go back to bed now?" Tiun asked.

"There is no fucking way that you looked at the Rianic Palace in the rising sun and were not moved. NO. WAY. You two are the biggest poseurs!"

Rin folded his arms. "Maybe, if we were born under a sand dune in the middle of the Great Howlin' Desert, we'd be moved, tá?"

"But we weren't." Tiun added.

"And we're not."

The only thing that moved us was you--"

"--from our bed."

Adavidarian threw both hands and his wings in the direction of the temple. "But this is The Rianic Palace At Sunrise!" He fairly hissed.

"There's nothing to be seen under the mornin' sun--"

"--that couldn't be seen better under a noonday sun-"

"---after ye let us get some godsdamned sleep."

slightly too late || unknown teenage human girl and a young drakthos || muspelheim, about 25 yrs (?) after the collapse

They were halfway up the mountain before it occurred to her to ask him "Have you ever walked home before?"

He paused, confused, and she asked him again, slower and with gestures, until he understood. Kapek frowned and shook his head no, and they both looked at each other for a moment, until she realized he was waiting for her to give him direction. Trying to ask him if he even knew if it was even possible to walk there was pointless, there was no reason he would know that, either. Trying to ask him how far they had to go was also probably just as pointless. She had two options at this point: continue onward, or turn around and go back home, sneak back to her room, crawl back into bed, and pretend that none of this had ever happened. How long had they been walking? Could she even get back before sun up? Oh god, this was dumb. Why didn't she think of any of this before?

"This was your idea." she snapped at him, and Kapek might not have understood the words, but the tone was enough; he flinched and took a cautious step back, and flicked his tongue a bit, and watched her, head tilted, with his usual very intense blue stare. She was displeased. Perhaps he could figure out why.

She wiped at her eyes angrily. "Oh, it's nothing--except that we're so dead." He tilted his head the other way. "Yes, you. Me. Dead."

Kapek looked a bit affronted, and showed her his saber.

"...You don't get it." She shook her head at him and adjusted the straps on her backpack. Her boyfriend simply not getting certain things had never seemed like such an issue when they were just hanging out in her room. "Never mind, Okay? Let's go." and then, ignoring the hand he offered her, she stubbornly pushed on.

"...that's just wrong." || quartet of wrong || takomanohara

Rin was aware of it first, as it woke him, but it was Tiun who disentangled himself and went out in the sun-bathed main room to look. He saw nothing, but he didn't particularly expect to.

"Ye might as well show yourself, tá?"

The fravashi stepped out of the beam of sunlight as easily as he'd passed around the screen between one room and the other. Madder red feathers blazed among the stars in her hair.

She didn't answer, simply stood and looked at him. He hadn't been this close to her before. She was a pretty little thing, light and heart's blood and chocolate, and so strangely (Passion is strange on them. Be careful.) wild.

She suddenly rose up on her toes, took Tiun's face in both hands, kissed him soundly--for a fraction of a second he was astonishingly, intimately aware of her, the warm curves of her body, the whisper of feathers, a hint of honeysuckle, and the taste of her mouth--and then she was gone, a rush of light and air.

"...That's just wrong." Tiun informed the still-quivering wind chimes and Goji plant in the window.

"Name one thing that's been right since the world ended." Rin muttered, yawning, as he brushed past Tiun and crossed the room, heading to the kitchen to start the water boiling.

"this was your idea." || sahin and mikkel || avalon

"So what political disaster in Alfheim brings you to my bed today? I wasn't expecting to see you for at least another moon."

"Why are the political disasters always Alfheim's fault? Perhaps Avalon started it this time." Mikkel retorted automatically, as he yawned, stretched nearly across the entire bed, flicked at Sahin's nose, and missed.

"Because they always are Alfheim's fault." Sahin smiled serenely. "Avalon is perfect. Except when it isn't, and then we politely hide the flaw behind a silk cloth and some court dancers until we mend it."

Mikkel laughed at him. "Of course." Then he sighed. "You wouldn't object if I simply hid here in your bed for the rest of my days, would you?"

"...What did you do, Puppy?"

"Nothing! I did nothing this time!" Mikkel protested. "I'm actually trying to avoid the political disaster."

"Ah! See that? I taught you that. The rest of Alfheim just goes marching right into the disaster and then throws bodies at it in hopes that the disaster will get fed up and go away."

"SAHIN." Mikkel groaned at him. "I'm serious."

Sahin leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees and his chin in his fingers. "I see you."

"Remember the Lan an Firrin's little dragon-boy?"

Sahin's serene expression darkened. "...Tá?"

"He's not dead. He's not missing anymore, either."

"Nil hea? Where is he, then?"

"He is the East American Federation."

"He leads their senate?"

"...Nil hea. He owns it, Sahin. This is no government. This is no nation, this is a company, and he is the head of that company. It is unlikely I will ever speak to him directly, but if we attempt a trade deal with them, it is only a matter of time before he will know me, if he does not already. Ard Ri-me does not know this yet. I am making myself unavailable at the moment, while I consider what must be done."

"Ah." Sahin considered this for a moment. "Perhaps you could apologize?"

Mikkel Looked at him.

"...Profusely?"

Mikkel's expression became even more strictly censorious. Sahin managed not to laugh and tried again.

"...On your knees? That would work for me. You have a very nice mouth."

Mikkel snatched up a pillow and smacked him with it. "This was your idea."

"I will gladly take credit for you being an ambassador, and a very good one, if you will also allow me to point out that beating up that child was entirely yours."

"pie!" || lucian, dr. czarnecka || nyc

"What are you doing in here again? Get out of my lab." Dr. Czarnecka said irritably, as she brushed past the ancient fravashi hovering over her slides. He ignored her, picked one up, and squinted through it. She took it out of his hand and put it back.

"Oh, come now," he said, smile widening ever-so-sightly. "Don't you know anything about corporate politics? As your boss's spouse you're supposed to nod and smile insincerely, project a bright and bubbly aspect, and greet me with a purely unjustified and entirely false sense of warmth every time you see me."

"What do you think would piss him off first, old man? The fact that I'm not smiling, or the fact that you're in my lab bothering me?"

"Very well, then, let's get down to business. What did you say to him earlier?"

"Hello, Sartain. No I will not have lunch with you, fine, give me fifteen minutes--you'll have to excuse me, my ability to recall entire conversations word-for-word is not my field of expertise." She said curtly, turning away from him to set up the centrifuge. He stepped directly in her path.

"Allow me to clarify. What exactly did you say to him that has left him in the miserable state of upset he's in right now?"

She looked at him. "I didn't. I asked him how he came to have a degree of caffeine tolerance heretofore unknown in drakthae. He upset himself over the course of explaining."

"Ah. Thank you. That will be all."

"Actually, no--one moment. Since you're here, I'd like to ask you a question."

The fravashi gave her a slightly mocking bow. "A question for me? I'm at your service."

"Exactly how are you managing to keep him here? Or is the Lan an Firrin still alive?" She paused, and then added, "Of course, in that case, the question still stands."

There was a strange, detached moment during which Dr. Czarnecka saw the moment of her murder come and go, flitting like a shadow across his face. She didn't blink.

"Pie!" He declared suddenly.

"What?"

"The commissary makes a fabulous pie. it's well worth sticking around for. In fact, I do believe I'm in the mood for a slice."

"Maybe we should've asked the civilization if it needed defending?" Rin murmured around a cigarette, and feeling the hard push of rejection from his twin even as he lit it. "Nil hea. It's owed." He said, smoke escaping with the words. "Said it was the first I'd do when we got here, didn't I?"

Tiun let it go with a disgusted jerk.

"Ye don't have to kiss me." Rin said, amused.

"Don't intend to now that ye put me off." Tiun said, studying the steady stream of people below, their costuming as exotic and colorful as their voices and auras were muted and scarcely detectable. Strange contrast. "We could ask Adavidarian what there's to do in this town."

They felt him before he spoke, and what they felt instantly won their attention, although neither of them moved, not Tiun from the window, nor Rin from where he stood, watching his twin.

"We could play fifty ways to kill your Aggiarch." Adavidarian purred, as he curved into the room. He glided up to Rin, and there was a moment's pause, as Rin looked down at him and Adavidarian looked up, and then edged nearer; the corner of Rin's lips started to twist into a cool smirk, and the smoke curled and slipped away between them. Adavidarian's purr merely grew louder, his lids lowered, and just as their lips would have touched, he moved, plucked the cigarette from Rin's fingers and put it into his own mouth.

He walked away, trailing smoke, and paused, once, at the doorway, puffing his prize, to see exactly what they intended to do about it.

Rin started walking toward him, his expression hard. Tiun left his place by the window and followed. Adavidarian smiled and flicked away a bit of ash.

Rin reached him first, shoved him across the tiny bedroom, and Adavidarian fell down on his back, wings spread, on the bed. The cigarette exploded into dust.

"I was smoking that." Rin growled.

"Oops." Adavidarian said, pursing his lips and blowing the last of the smoke.